Israel vote deadlock confirmed by near-complete official results
Jerusalem: Near-complete official results Friday confirmed a deadlock in Israel's general election this week, putting Benny Gantz's party as the largest but without an obvious path to form a majority coalition.
The results from Israel's election committee showed Gantz's centrist Blue and White with 33 seats out of 120 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud with 31.
Final results will be published on Wednesday, it said, and there could be changes before then. The committee said the results did not include 14 polling stations where verifications were still ongoing. Israeli media said that meant 99.8 percent of the votes had been counted. The third-largest total was the mainly Arab Joint List alliance, which won 13 seats, followed by the Jewish ultra-Orthodox party Shas with nine.
Another ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism, won eight seats, as did ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman's nationalist Yisrael Beitenu. The results have put Netanyahu's long tenure in office at risk.
On Thursday, he acknowledged the results did not allow him to form a right-wing coalition as he hoped and instead called on Gantz to form a unity government with him. Gantz responded by saying he would have to be prime minister in a unity government since Blue and White was the largest party.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin plans to begin consultations with all parties voted into parliament on Sunday to decide who to choose to try to form a government.
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Tsunami alert after a volcano in Indonesia has several big eruptions and thousands are told to leave
Jakarta, Apr 17: Indonesian authorities issued a tsunami alert Wednesday after eruptions at Ruang mountain sent ash thousands of feet high. Officials ordered more than 11,000 people to leave the area.
The volcano on the northern side of Sulawesi island had at least five large eruptions in the past 24 hours, Indonesia's Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation said. Authorities raised their volcano alert to its highest level.
At least 800 residents left the area earlier Wednesday.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
Authorities urged tourists and others to stay at least 6 km (3.7 miles) from the 725-metre (2,378 foot) Ruang volcano.
Officials worry that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami as in a 1871 eruption there.
Tagulandang island to the volcano's northeast is again at risk, and its residents are among those being told to evacuate.
Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency said residents will be relocated to Manado, the nearest city, on Sulawesi island, a journey of six hours by boat.
In 2018, the eruption of Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano caused a tsunami along the coasts of Sumatra and Java after parts of the mountain fell into the ocean, killing 430 people.
